THE STRUGGLE ISRAEL
An Israeli missile strike near a Gaza clinic killed nearly a dozen children, officials said. Is there any hope of Donald Trump pushing Benjamin Netanyahu toward peace?
- Hamas agreed to release 10 hostages as part of ceasefire negotiations with Israel aimed at ending almost two years of bloody conflict in the Gaza Strip. Despite those talks, the Israel Defense Forces devastating operation rolls on, as the civilian death toll in Gaza grows. An Israeli airstrike hit a group of women and children who were waiting for food outside of a clinic in the territory this morning, killing 15 people, including 10 children, according to the local hospital and aid officials. One woman was pregnant and trying to obtain children’s supplements, her aunt told BBC.
- The Israel Defense Forces claimed that they had been targeting an unnamed Hamas operative and are reviewing the strike. I texted an IDF spokesperson for comment: “When and where did this event allegedly occur?” they responded, before sending a boilerplate statement about attempting to minimize harm during attacks. I asked how long the review would take: “We have nothing further to comment beyond the current comment.” The White House didn’t respond to What A Day’s comment request.
- The clinic targeted is run by Washington, D.C.-based aid group Project HOPE. The aid group had shared the clinic’s coordinates with Israel beforehand, which is a common safety practice. “They were aware that civilians visited that site in order to receive health care,” Chessa Latifi, the group’s deputy director of emergency response, told What A Day. “This was not something that we were running under the radar.”
- Israel has a lengthy track record of killing children in Gaza, according to aid groups and international organizations. Earlier this week, a 5-month-old girl and a 14-year-old boy were reportedly killed in horrific Israeli strikes. Israel has killed more than 17,000 children since fighting began in October 2023, according to local health officials. That equates to one child every 45 minutes, Al Jazeera calculated. Meanwhile, hundreds of other kids are starving to death amid Israel’s blockade of food into the territory, according to UNICEF.
Will Israel’s behavior change now? Probably not, as the Trump administration keeps enabling what foreign policy experts and aid organizations increasingly refer to as genocide.
- The Trump administration greenlit billions of dollars in weapons to Israel for its fighting and rolled out the red carpet for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House earlier this week. What’s more, the State Department sanctioned an independent U.N. investigator who probes human rights abuses in Gaza and the West Bank.
- President Donald Trump’s policies have made it more difficult for aid groups to operate. “Our clinics in Gaza used to be funded by USAID,” Latifi said. “With that pulled out from us … the question is, are we going to be okay in the next couple of months, or next couple of weeks?”
- Publicly, Trump is striking a peaceful tone: “I’m stopping wars. I’m stopping wars. And I hate to see people killed,” Trump said on Monday, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize.
When these deadly strikes happen, it’s crucial to remember who is being affected: “They were parents, just like anywhere across the world trying to get health care for their kids in a really terrible environment,” Latifi added.
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